WebOS To Become Open Source

January 26, 2012

HP announced this week that their WebOS mobile operating system has become available as open source software. The main product, known as WebOS 1.0, will be released in September, according to Slashgear.com.

The development environment called Enyo has already been released under the Apache 2.0 license. Enyo allows developers to create Open WebOS applications that work independently of whichever web browser that is being used, meaning WebKit is not necessary. Enyo also opens up WebOS to Android and iOS developers using Enyo 2.0 which is included.

Matthew McNulty, who is head of developer tools at WebOS told The Register, “My team is one of the true believers of the WebOS environment. We built Enyo to work in any container – it has been in the back of our minds from the beginning.”

According to The Register, HP wanted to put developers first. Sam Greenblatt, CTO of WebOS said, “We wanted to do it right, we´re upleveling WebOS to the most current versions. Basically we inverted the triangle, coming at it with developer stuff first so they can develop for many platforms. This fulfills the dream we had two to three years ago of what WebOS was supposed to be.”

HP will be releasing small portions of developer tools up until the final WebOS 1.0 release date in September. The hope is that the slow drip of developer tools will allow them to get up to speed on the current iteration of the code before the final release date.

Proving they want the project to succeed, HP has kept its full development team on the project. They have setup an aggressive release schedule showing their full support for the project. But, when the register asked Greenblatt about whether HP would be release WebOS products, he was uncharacteristically coy, saying, “That will be announced in the future. Obviously if it´s the best platform out there, then HP will look at it very closely.